Liz Claiborne

Anne Elizabeth Jane Claiborne, a fashion revolutionary, died on June 26th, aged 78

ALMOST every woman knows the feeling. You get into the lift, and a very important woman in your office enters after you, talking to a very important man. She is impeccable, from polished court shoes to understated earrings. You are not. You are wearing trainers, because you want to be comfortable on city pavements, and a blouse that doesn't quite match the skirt because the one that matched better was too grubby round the neck when you went to find it. Nothing is ironed, and there is a faint stain on the skirt that is yesterday's lunchtime soup ineffectually rubbed off with a Kleenex.

The very important woman glances at you, from the feet upwards. Her lip curls almost imperceptibly. She looks away. You wish that you might become a vapour, and leak away through the lift walls.

Liz Claiborne understood all that. Not that anyone ever looked at her that way, since from immaculately creased slacks to cropped dark hair to giant, fun glasses she was absolutely comme il faut. But she grasped exactly what American women needed as the aproned housewife of the 1950s morphed into the professional of the 1970s. Good tailoring, classic styling, quality material, mix-and-match colours, a dash of panache: just the tops and trousers and skirts, set off with a Claiborne scarf and a Claiborne leather tote, in which to stride down Fifth Avenue or into the halls of power.

“Effortless” is still a favourite word in the Claiborne catalogue. Ms Claiborne knew her customers were imperfect, mostly with bodies they didn't like, and wanted clothes that flattered them with no discomfort and no ironing. She took care to give them collars that stayed flat and pleats that stayed pressed, and comforted the size-20s with billowing tops “to accentuate your form”. Her customers worked hard, juggling office and children, but also wanted to have fun without dashing home to change; so her clothes were designed not to rumple or stain, to go “effortlessly from work to weekend”, and even “well into the night”. And since in all this frazzle they had little time to shop, she offered them—from 1976 onwards, when the brand was launched in top department stores like Saks and Bloomingdale's—separates filed on adjoining racks, to be plucked from the hangers at speed.

The undertow of defiance in all this was quite deliberate. Though her business was clothing women, Ms Claiborne was in a world where, to her lasting fury, men still ran things and men got all the breaks. Her father had never considered that she needed much education; instead, she studied art in painters' studios in Europe, learning almost informally “how to see” and how to use colour. She then spent years, in New York's Garment District along Seventh Avenue, making sketches and picking up pins for male designers who proved cloth-eared where her ideas for fashions were concerned. The big guns of style were Calvin Klein and Bill Blass, both unaffordable to most working women. But Ms Claiborne designed away, leaving her second husband and two male business partners to do the duller stuff, until by 1988 Liz Claiborne Inc had sales of $1.2 billion and a third of the American women's upscale sportswear market. She went into menswear, shoes, perfume, soft furnishings. Hers was the first company founded by a woman to reach the Fortune 500.

In tux and fedora

As such, Ms Claiborne was keen to make it feel a different place. She put flowers round the offices, painted them very white, did away with doors and, to show contempt for male hierarchies, listed her employees in the handbook in alphabetical order. Meetings were controlled by the CEO, as crisp and aloof as a châtelaine by some accounts, ringing a dainty glass bell. But anyone who doubted her revolutionary intent had only to spot her love of red—“Liz Red”, the brightest in the palette, in sweaters and bags and round the rim of her glasses—to know what she was up to.

American women struggled to keep pace with her. She knew she was several steps ahead, but had no wish to shock; if she thought they could wear puce, or dare a keyhole halter to work, she could nudge them forward, because they trusted her taste. She would notice them with delight in the streets in her chinos and her tops, and would sometimes sneak into changing rooms, posing as a sales girl, to show them how to wear clothes. She was part of a huge joint venture to build confidence. And when she retired in 1989, leaving a company that now controls 40 brands and has annual sales of $5 billion in 22,000 sites round the world, she set up a foundation whose main interests, as well as saving wildlife, were stopping domestic violence and making women self-sufficient.

The business of fashion had ceased to enchant by then. Liz Claiborne Inc had become too huge, and the task of vetting designs too wearisome. The fashions going out in her name were “cheap-looking”; she began to dress in DKNY. But clothes never lost their fascination. In her late 60s Ms Claiborne appeared on a red carpet in a black tux and black fedora, the epitome of style. She had taught women to be sassy and sporty in a man's world; though nothing would ever stop them, among themselves, eyeing each other most disparagingly up and down.